


Collar Studs

by LinkWorshiper



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Fluff and Smut, M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 08:57:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6232438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinkWorshiper/pseuds/LinkWorshiper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thomas is leading the staff for the first time abroad. Imagine his surprise when he finds Jimmy Kent has become Atticus Aldridge's new valet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collar Studs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Laramie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laramie/gifts).



> This is for Laramie, who hand wrote a bunch of smut and then snail-mailed it to me. Imagine! Of course, my efforts at smut usually end up with a bunch of plot as well, so sorry you have to dig for the good stuff, haha. 
> 
> This was also a plot-bunny I've had stashed away. I can't remember where I read it, but apparently valets would have been footmen trained by the butler. They would be expected to help him dress much in the same way a valet would help an employer. 
> 
> THIS IS ALSO SUPER UNEDITED I AM SORRY LOL.

 

When Lady Rose invited the Crawleys to New York to celebrate her baby’s first birthday, Thomas had expected a lot of things. Of course, since he had been to there before with Lord Grantham, he knew what the city was like – where to go for a coffee and where to go for a shag; he knew how New Yorkers spoke and how to handle their extremely American ways, what a bagel was and which way was the Bronx and which way was Brooklyn. He was expert at riding the subway – right down to navigating the difference between the IRT and the BMT. He had expected that as Crawley family’s new butler, there would be even more work in another household, and that all eyes would be on him in his first time heading the staff abroad as Mr. Carson’s replacement.  

What he did not expect was to find Jimmy Kent serving Atticus Aldridge as his valet.

“Learned a little bit from you, yeah, Mr. Barrow?” said Jimmy over cards, which had come out of his sleeve with some afternoon tea almost as if nothing had changed in the two years they’d been apart. He dealt a quick game of snap and lit a cigarette, which he seemed to have started keeping his own supply of since his departure. “Though I s’pose it didn’t hurt Lady Rose remembered she owed me a favor and I needed a job,” he added, leaning in to Thomas conspiratorially.

“Did she, really?” wondered Thomas, folding his hand closer to his chest as the scent of bay rum – which perpetually clung to Jimmy –  drifted a little too sensually beneath his nose. “I can’t possibly imagine what sort of _favors_ a well-born lady could owe a footman,” he said, while privately torturing himself with all sorts of possibilities he rather wished he wouldn’t. The wound Lady Anstruther had left behind still was a sore one.

“Believe it or not, _I’m_ good at keepin’ secrets!” said Jimmy with a touch of pride, pointedly dangling the unasked question about exactly what secret of Lady Rose’s he had become privy to.

Thomas – very pointedly – denied him the satisfaction of pressing for details, and instead asked sardonically, “Which makes you a qualified valet, does it?”

 “Well,” Jimmy drawled, leaning towards Thomas again, “like I said: I learned a bit from you about it, right?”                

“Stop tryin’ to cheat,” said Thomas tightly, flattening his cards against the table. He reached for his tea and made a show of sipping at it, a smoking cigarette pinched between two of the fingers that gripped the cup’s tiny handle. The china rattled when he reset the cup on its saucer.

“I’m bein’ honest, me!” Jimmy insisted, gesturing with his own cigarette, which drew smoky lines that wafted and dissipated around his face. He dropped his hand, suddenly no longer interested in cards, and dragged his chair an inch closer to Thomas’s, dropping his voice again even though there was no one lingering in the servants’ hall long enough to pay them any mind. “I wouldn’t know a thing about it if you hadn’t shown me the proper way of it,” he said in a way that made Thomas feel dirty.

“It’s nothin’ you wouldn’t expect a footman to learn from his senior staff,” Thomas said quickly, though his thoughts had quickly transported back to the blessed years Jimmy had spent at Downton, and how looking back on it seemed so very much like a dream that would vanish if he concentrated too hard on trying to remember it. For better or for worse, even at its most dismal moments, the time Thomas had spent in Jimmy’s company had been his happiest. For better or for worse, despite what his younger self might have protested, being butler wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.  

“Yeah, but old Mr. Carson took Alfred on for all that, not me,” said Jimmy, who didn’t seem particularly aware of how his behavior was affecting Thomas. Yet Thomas could have sworn Jimmy’s voice had become just a little bit thicker as he went on, “And you were more’n happy to volunteer.”

Thomas was suddenly struck with the impression that he’d become tangled up in one of Jimmy’s little games without even realizing it. He cursed himself internally, almost annoyed that Jimmy still managed to wrap him so easily around his finger – and then cursed himself further when he admitted to himself he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. He inched his chair back a bit to accommodate for Jimmy’s encroachment, saying, “Well, despite what Mr. Carson thought, I wasn’t about to let _Alfred_ embarrass the house if he had to valet for some guest, and anyway – you _were_ first footman.”

“Too right,” Jimmy said with another swell of pride, clearly delighted with himself. But when that faded, the same slyness was left in his tone. Jimmy leaned a heavy elbow on the table and leaned closer to Thomas, like he wanted to impart a secret, “Besides, who’d be a better consultant on dressin’ sharp and proper than the likes of _you_ , eh?”

Thomas wasn’t sure what Jimmy’s intention was, but he rankled at the implication all the same. “The likes of me, is it?” he repeated with an arched eyebrow and heavy eyelids.

“Have you ever looked at yourself in a mirror?” Jimmy asked, his curled lip doing well to mask whether or not he was serious. “Don’t get coy – I know you do it all the time.”

“You should know very well there’s a reason Mr. Carson wouldn’t let me train valets, even though it were s’posed to be part of me job,” Thomas said flatly, choosing very obtusely to ignore the fact that Jimmy had just given him a backhanded compliment about his looks. He refused to let it please him as much as he wanted it to.  

“He let you train me,” said Jimmy, gesturing to himself in an effort to display the Windsor knotted tie at his throat and the black waist coat it was tucked into. A glint of pewter shone in his pocket, where a very handsome pocket watch was just visible.

“I should say that was a special case,” Thomas said curtly, unsure where Jimmy was trying to go with this particular thread of conversation. He knew that Mr. Carson had only allowed it because he and Jimmy had ended up becoming so close, it was impossible for anyone to get a civil word out of either of them if they weren’t talking amongst themselves. _And_ , he added on a darker note, _he probably assumed that if anythin’ untoward were to happen, Jimmy’d already proved capable of raisin’ an alarm. For what that was worth, anyway._

“Say,” Jimmy suddenly interjected, though the forcefulness of it gave Thomas pause to think that Jimmy had been waiting to say this very thing since they’d sat down: “You wouldn’t happen to have someone along who helps you dress for dinner and such, would you?”

“No,” said Thomas carefully, now very aware that he was treading on thin ice at the behest of a mad jester. “I prefer to do it myself, and besides – Mr. Carson still wouldn’t approve it.”

This particularly detail perplexed Jimmy, which killed his inquisitiveness as he sat back in his chair. Frowning, he asked, “But I thought _you_ were butler now? Isn’t getting’ footmen to dress you part of the perks? Thought you’d like that.”

Thomas sighed despite Jimmy’s effort to be funny. “It’s practically just a title,” he confessed, groping for his tea and another pull on his cigarette. “Mr. Carson still gets final say on everythin’ that happens round the house, and everyone still treats me like they wouldn’t have me for a sunbeam. I feel positively trapped – no better or worse than before.” Thomas conveniently edited out the bits about how depressed he’d been since Jimmy had gone, and how desperate he’d gotten when it seemed like his time of dying was completely inconsequential to everyone he knew – including himself. “And even if Mr. Carson didn’t mind, it’d be the lads who did.” Another story to be forgotten in casual conversation.

“I didn’t mind,” Jimmy spoke up, as if his opinion mattered more than even that of Mr. Carson. “I liked those lessons – an’ you’re a good teacher and all, y’know that?” He was stubbing his dwindling cigarette into an ashtray that sat beside their discarded pile of cards, his movements becoming a bit stringent as he did so. “Mr. Aldridge says he’s never had a valet who could do such an even bowtie, or who can cut hair so nicely, an’ who always knows which magazines have got the best styles, so… I s’pose I can owe all that to you.” He rolled the cigarette around the tray needlessly, its cylindrical shape deteriorating amongst the ash; “Owe a lot to you, really.”

“S’pose it’s nice getting’ a bit of credit for _somethin’_ ,” Thomas acquiesced, though he was still watching Jimmy’s suddenly reticent behavior with curiosity. “But then again, I s’pose you weren’t ever like the rest of them,” he added, careful to watch for any shift in Jimmy’s face. “I liked that about you.”

The quick laugh that fell from Jimmy was almost heavy-handed. “Liked a lot about me, didn’t you,” he said with a certain expression that Thomas couldn’t decipher. The look disappeared almost as quickly as it had arrived, leaving Thomas to wonder in the confines of his memory, while Jimmy went on, “I’d say you like a lot about _me_ that _you_ like about _you_.”

“That’s not untrue,” Thomas lied with much more ease than Jimmy just had. The last thing he ever wanted was to distress Jimmy by telling him that he had become rather practiced in the art of self-loathing as of late, and that every fake smile he had to paste on his face deflated him just a little bit more every day.

“Well, I think it’s brilliant,” Jimmy was saying as he stood up to gather his playing cards and cigarettes. He ferried them all into hidden pockets with the flourish of a conman, and then picked up his cup of tea to take on the run. “Let’s catch up later,” he called over his shoulder to Thomas as he started to head for the kitchens; “I miss bein’ with you.”

 

\--

 

Lady Rose had thrown quite the to-do for her daughter’s birthday, and it was all hands to the pump. Though it might not have been normally expected of him in someone else’s house, Thomas was in the dining room to help serve the wine, which was quite an honor considering the stuff had to be practically snuck in the back door. Meanwhile, Andy and the three footmen who worked for the Aldridges saw to the catering. The Aldridge butler was busy managing the comings and goings in the servery, while Jimmy was nowhere to be seen. Thomas spent the duration of the meal trying hard not to drop the decanter in his hand, while also trying not to let his thoughts run away with him.

He remembered the nights he had spent showing Jimmy the duties of a proper valet: tying and untying ties, negotiating collar studs and adjusting waistcoats with hands that quavered. For some reason, Thomas remembered that the most – even more so than lying shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor with Jimmy as they flipped through gentlemen’s magazines together, analyzing fashion and noting the sorts of standards a lord or an earl would be expected to be held to, but relied on his valet to know in his stead. No, it was Jimmy’s unsteady hands whenever he helped Thomas dress for dinner that Thomas was preoccupied with. It had been over three years ago and yet the very recollection of it made the decanter he held rattle with soft, crystalline clinks.

Back then, Jimmy had never complained about it, which Thomas had half expected the brazen young man to do considering the mishap in their shared history. For a time, Thomas had wondered, once they had decidedly become friends, why Jimmy had proceeded as if the whole thing didn’t bother him – much less had even happened at all. He had thought it was something worth mentioning if they were to continue this particular breed of mentorship – because Jimmy’s hands, his hands, his _goddamn hands_ shook whenever he touched a button.

Thomas continued to think about it through the customary cigars that took place in the library after dinner. He wondered where Jimmy was at that particular moment – for the Aldridges lived in a brownstone that wasn’t particularly large – and what he might be doing. He wondered if there was some pretty maid down in the kitchens that Jimmy had glued his sights on – if Jimmy was off flirting or gallivanting or doing any number of things that Thomas’s heart just couldn’t take.

Especially now that he was stuck thinking of Jimmy’s long, beautiful pianist’s hands the way he used to.

Those hands on his waistcoat the night they had found themselves entangled in a kiss Thomas still sometimes thought he’d dreamed up. Thomas’s waistcoat had hit the floor and Jimmy’s fingers were on the findings of his braces, then his pectorals, sliding up his neck to cup his chin and try for a kiss he’d been shy in pulling out of Thomas. Any such hesitance drained away when Jimmy pulled their mouths together, and soon found himself pinned to the wall as Thomas kissed him back. Jimmy had breathlessly told him that he had wanted what he’d been cheated out of, and Thomas had been happy to provide uninterrupted service on that front. Jimmy had moaned for him and kissed back, and Thomas was pretty sure that was the night he had actually died. Especially since it only happened once, and Jimmy had forgotten it almost as easily as he’d forgotten their other midnight encounter. Thomas told himself it had to do with Ivy; it made getting to sleep in the aftermath of such an event slightly easier.

But it wasn’t so easy to ignore now, especially with Jimmy floating around the same house like the ghost of those shared nights sent to haunt him from his past. He drifted from dinner to his borrowed dormitory in the servants’ quarters, which occupied the building that stood across the house’s rear yard and faced the other side of the block on a much less posh street. It would take a lot of resolve for Thomas to keep himself under control with temptation greeting him on such a regular basis. But then again, what else should he have expected from a trip to New York City?

Alone at last, he was just removing his oxfords when a knock came at the door. He didn’t even get the chance to permit entry before it was pushed open, revealing none other than Jimmy in a corona of electric hallway light. He was carrying a small tray with a pot of coffee and two cups, and seemed almost solemn as he entered the room and kicked the door closed behind him. “Thought you could use a little warmer,” he said as he placed the tray on the bureau.

“I’ll be up all night if I drink that,” Thomas said, eying the coffee warily as he pushed his shoes under the bed and stood up to take off his tailcoat, moving to stand beside Jimmy as he slipped it onto its hanger and put it up on its wall hook. Jimmy seemed to not have heard him, and was busy filling both mugs with the steaming, black liquid.

“Maybe I _want_ you up all night,” said Jimmy with that nefarious slyness of his as he offered Thomas one of the coffees. “But I got some bootleg whiskey in me trunk if you’d like that instead.”

“No, no – it’s fine,” said Thomas, already too mystified by Jimmy’s comment to consider adding alcohol into the mix. He took a long sip of it that drained most of the cup, and then discarded it onto the tray in favor of unbuttoning his cufflinks. As he did so, he noted that Jimmy had, at some point, discarded his pocket watch on the bureau with the coffee pot, like he meant to get comfortable. Pleasant as the idea was to him, the last two days had been strenuous, from arriving and discovering Jimmy, and then handling the particulars of the party and all the rest. In truth, he wanted desperately to just turn in and let the drone of Manhattan shout over his hopeless fantasies. He dropped the silver clasps into the bureau’s top drawer with his watch, and then started to unhitch his waistcoat for a little bit of air, unsure what any of it meant.

“Here, here, let me help you with that,” interrupted Jimmy, who quickly abandoned his coffee to bat Thomas’s hands away from his buttons. Much like his forward entry into the room, Jimmy didn’t wait for Thomas to react, forcibly pushing Thomas’s hands aside so that he could take over the loosening of his waistcoat. Very drolly, Thomas noted how steadily Jimmy’s fingers worked – and how quick his heartbeat had become.

With a sigh, Thomas forced himself to ask the responsible question: “What’re you doin’ here.” He met Jimmy’s eyes just as the valet pulled the two panels of his waistcoat apart, and momentarily couldn’t speak for the size of his heart in his throat. He swallowed audibly, and added, “Really.”

“A bloke’s gotta get permission to see his best mate, now?” asked Jimmy, feigning indignation. His hands ran up the hem of Thomas’s waistcoat in a way Thomas might have called _familiar_ if he hadn’t known better, and then pinched the sleeve holes at the shoulders. “Especially after all this time?” he murmured as he started to ease the waistcoat down Thomas’s arms.

Thomas was taken aback, too genuinely surprised to hear that sort of sentiment from Jimmy to move as the garment fell over his wrists and to the floor. Nothing quite so mawkish ever came across in the letters they’d occasionally exchanged, which had tapered off as the space between them had grown. Jimmy usually asked after his health, whether he was happy and whether there was any good gossip; Thomas usually lied and then asked after the same, which sometimes left Thomas wondering if the person Jimmy was interacting with was really even Thomas, himself, at all.

“I can do it on my own,” Thomas mumbled, suddenly very entranced by the cuff of his sleeve, which flitted dangerously around the evidence of the day he went dark.

But Jimmy was determined. “Please,” he entreated softly. “Let me help.”

Then Jimmy’s hands were on his bowtie, gently tugging at its tails until it fell apart and hung limply around his neck. Thomas could only stare at Jimmy, slowly growing aware of a certain glow in Jimmy’s downcast expression that was somehow both different and familiar all at once as Jimmy pushed Thomas’s braces over his biceps to dangle from their loops at his sides. The heart-sized lump returned to Thomas’s throat and slowly sunk as Jimmy’s slim fingers bent the head of his collar stud and slipped it through its buttonhole. The progression of Thomas’s trembling heart as it slipped through his ribs followed the pace of Jimmy’s fingers as they flipped the studs all the way down the length of Thomas’s shirt, parting the stiff bosom with the efficiency of a well-groomed valet.

But when Jimmy started to tug Thomas’s shirt away, a sobering reality slapped the butler in the face. No matter what strange games Jimmy was playing with him, he simply couldn’t allow Jimmy to see the horrible damage he’d done to himself since they’d last been together. Regardless of his wants and desires, he’d always liked that Jimmy regarded him highly, and it killed him to think that only a scrap of fabric stood between that fragile respect and whatever semblance of a relationship they still might have. He couldn’t dream of destroying Jimmy’s newfound happiness with the introduction of such a tragic scene.

“Stop, stop,” said Thomas, resolutely crossing his arms over his chest to keep both his wrists hidden, while also impeding the loss of any more clothing. “What’s your gamble, eh, Jimmy? And don’t avoid answerin’ me this time – I don’t like it.”

“Don’t you?” said Jimmy, whose tone was very decidedly playful as he slid his arms around Thomas’s neck. He toyed with the loop that held Thomas’s bowtie beneath his back collar stud and lifted a corner of his mouth with amusement; “I thought you’d be rather pleased,” he said, his voice growing thicker as his lips neared Thomas’s ear, his hot breath teasing the shorn black hair at his temple; “To know how well I’ve learned to undress a man.”

For about three full seconds, the heady scent of Jimmy’s bay rum made Thomas lucid, his mind flashing with every little implicated smile or questionable look Jimmy had ever given him, suddenly enchanted with the cognition that not a single one had been in his imagination. But then Jimmy drew away, taking his noxious musk with him, and Thomas’s toes returned to the floor – as did his sense of reality. He cleared his throat and pressed his arms more tightly against his chest, saying very evenly, “If you mean that I’m pleased to see my help has got you right on your feet, then yes, I rather well am.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Jimmy parroted, though he said it with a hint of suggestion.

“Well, isn’t that what you’ve come in here for?” Thomas asked, starting to feel a little anxious, though he couldn’t properly tell if it was because of his hidden scars, or the fact that Jimmy’s eyes were burning holes through him with a certain luster that was toeing a dangerous line. “Though I’m sure Mr. Aldridge has far more important things for his valet to be doin’ than tendin’ to the needs of a visiting _servant_.”

“Oh, Mr. Aldridge doesn’t mind much what I get into once he’s settled for the night,” Jimmy said, unable to keep his hands off of Thomas for very long. His pianist’s fingers were decorating Thomas’s tense biceps with an intermezzo. “And you’re not just some _servant_ , Thomas.If t’were up to me, you’d have the big bedroom and servants and whatever else you wanted. ‘Cause there ain’t anyone else in this house as important as you are to me.” He reeled himself close enough to press himself against the barrier of Thomas’s folded arms, circling his own around Thomas’s neck as he made his meaning much more clear: “And there ain’t no one here who wants to _please_ you so much as I do.”

A part of Thomas wanted to feel shame at how pliable he was becoming under Jimmy’s sway, but the better part of him could have cared less. His arms loosened against his torso as Jimmy pressed their bodies closer together, and Jimmy’s sinful mouth was at his ear again, whispering, “I think you’ll find I’m a bit smarter about meself than I were back in our Downton days. A little more sure.”

“A-And how’s that?” Thomas stammered, already spinning as he tried to piece together what could possibly make a cocksure young thing like Jimmy feel more like a man.

“Well, to start,” Jimmy drawled against Thomas’s blushing cheekbone, “I’ve found out just how much I love _cock_.” He punctuated the admission with a wet kiss against Thomas’s warming flesh.

“E-Excuse me?” The dual tug of emotions yanked Thomas apart: he felt slighted, in a way, that Jimmy just seemed to have come running to him for an easy shag, but the sentiment was greatly overshadowed by the fact that Jimmy _wanted him_. After years of pining and fantasizing and dreaming, Thomas didn’t care if Jimmy just wanted him as a toy for the night: landing in this situation made all his troubles suddenly worthwhile.

“Y’know, it were that night you kissed me – properly, that is,” Jimmy continued against Thomas’s cheek, as if to assure Thomas that he wasn’t just running games. “I wanted you to kiss me like that from the very first day I met you. Though to be fair, I s’pose at first I just liked the idea that I could get a man to fall over his feet like a girl – seemed like more of a victory. But then I had a taste and I – I wanted more of what I couldn’t have.” Jimmy took a moment to chuckle, which came out as a pleasant vibration against Thomas’s skin; “Until I took off your waistcoat and you pushed me against the wall. Then I knew all I ever wanted was _you_.”

Thomas tried to keep himself firmly rooted in rationality, because he knew that once he fell over the threshold, he wouldn’t be able to control himself. “You wanted me, while makin’ messes of girls’ hearts left and right?” Thomas asked incredulously, though his eyelids had fluttered closed at the touch of Jimmy’s lips against his jaw. “Let’s not forget the incident that got you _fired_.”

At this, Jimmy drew back, cocking his head as he tried to find Thomas’s eyes. “Y’know, there’s a difference between gettin’ it off ‘cause it’s _there_ ,” he said carefully, “and gettin’ it ‘cause it’s _love_.”

The word hung between them like some sort of enchantment, pulling out all sorts of secrets that neither of them had ever been brave enough to say aloud. Jimmy breathed deeply and let his fingers dance down Thomas’s back, like he was trying to keep every nuance of Thomas memorized to his senses. Raggedly, Thomas was whispering against his hair, “You _love_ me?” The idea seemed practically ludicrous – a dream that was so fabulous, Thomas knew he didn’t deserve it.

“Did’ya think I were just _askin_ ’ if you had someone along to undress you?” Jimmy retorted smugly, though he somehow managed to make it seem affectionate all the same.

“You know what I meant,” Thomas said again with a slight clip, rearranging their positions so that he could hold Jimmy firmly by the chin. He fought to discern some hint of a jape in Jimmy’s expression – some clue that might save him from embarrassment and repeated disappointment. There was nothing.

Just the electric blue beneath Jimmy’s drooping eyelids.

Looking at him, Thomas felt as though he’d tumbled into a cosmic pool, surging through a tube of bubbles as he raced towards the moon gleaming at the bottom. Jimmy might have had a pistol pressed to his head and Thomas would have never known the difference, so consumed by the moment. He almost had to remind himself where he was.

“It were a scary thing,” Jimmy eventually admitted, once a substantial period of silence had passed between them.

“You mean realizin’ that you liked kissin’…” Thomas swallowed for what seemed like the hundredth time that night; “…kissin’ blokes like me?”

Jimmy caught Thomas’s wrists and started to guide them towards his own waistcoat, his fingers gently alighting the bones ridging the backs of Thomas’s hands as he laid Thomas’s thumbs upon the first button. “It’s more’n that. I’m pretty sure I always had an _inkling_ for kissin’ blokes,” Jimmy said softly, gently urging Thomas to undo the fastenings with a nudge. “I tried it with a few other ones to see if that’s what I was about,” he told Thomas as the butler hesitantly began to undo Jimmy’s black waistcoat. A quiet snort escaped Jimmy, the faintest of amusements, as he continued, “It were some of the best sordid shite I ever got up to, I’ll tell you that. God bless America – or whatever.”

His mouth dry, Thomas was still lost somewhere between wanting to ignore the idea of Jimmy being with anyone else, while still being thirsty to hear every dirty detail about Jimmy’s escapades with his own sex. A perverse part of Thomas, which he often kept quieted, was urgent to draw images of Jimmy being dominated by a man. His mind’s eye conveniently provided Jimmy with pale lovers that were dark of hair and finely cheekboned.

The last button of Jimmy’s waistcoat came free, Jimmy shrugged out of it like it was a buckled jacket meant to tie him to an asylum, pulling down his braces with similar urgency. He craned his neck, wordlessly indicating that he wanted Thomas to unknot his tie. “But there were this _one_ time, when some rich bloke Mr. Aldridge does business with came to stay for a few days, an’ I had to tend to him while he were underfoot,” Jimmy went on as Thomas silently worked, a breath trapped high in his nose. “And he had me pinned down on them satin sheets they’ve got in the pretty bedrooms, and while he had me, I called him _Thomas_.”

Thomas suddenly forgot how neckties worked.

If Thomas had been looking at Jimmy’s face, he would have seen the mixture of amusement and sensuality that was coating his features. “I called him _Thomas_ , _my Thomas_ , and he slapped me,” Jimmy continued with a low rasp, like the very memory of it was affecting him; “Then,” he went on, his tone dropping even more, “he told me to do it again – and he slapped me. And again.” Jimmy wasn’t even pretending like his story wasn’t meant to plow straight through Thomas’s chest: “And I fuckin’ begged for you all night, while his wife slept in the room down the hall.”

Jimmy was breathing heavily now, which was a relief to Thomas, because he was virtually trembling at the picture of Jimmy naked and on his back, legs coiled around a stranger’s waist as he panted and moaned for _him_. He jerked at the tails of Jimmy’s tie, ripping it from beneath the stiff, turned-down collar with the crisp whistle of silk against linen, and threw it aside. “Why’re you tellin’ me this,” Thomas asked, licking parched lips, uncaring that he’d nearly destroyed Jimmy’s collar.

Smirking, Jimmy reached for Thomas’s trousers, running his fingertips along the woolen waistline that sagged with the weight of Thomas’s dropped braces. “’Cause tonight, when I beg,” he murmured breathily, “I can have _you_.” Jimmy’s hand had dipped beneath the waist of Thomas’s trousers, upsetting the tails of his shirt as he groped for his prize, which he found damp and willing through cotton boxers. “And I want you hard.”

At once, Thomas’s fingers were clumsily flipping the tips of Jimmy’s collar and shirt studs, ripping at the material in his desperation to get him out of it. He balled the shirt in one hand and flung it away, already working at the cotton undershirt that separated him from Jimmy’s toned torso. Jimmy’s hands were working dual tasks, one unbuttoning Thomas’s trousers, while the other remained buried inside the garment to touch and tease Thomas’s weeping cock with little strokes that were already enough to make Thomas shudder with pleasure. It might have been something peculiar if Thomas hadn’t already known that it was perfect. He stumbled back against the nearby bed, gripping the metal frame as Jimmy’s touching became more forward.

Jimmy fell to his knees as he pulled Thomas’s trousers to the floor, his intentions more than clear. Thomas had to bite his lip as Jimmy then relieved him of his boxers, allowing his hardening cock to ache against the tails of his shirt, which still hung around his hips with teasing modesty.

“Mm, it’s just as handsome as the rest of you,” complimented Jimmy as he took hold of Thomas’s erection with one hand, the other grasping one of the vertical bars fit into the bed’s frame like he needed to steady himself as he bent his head to suck.

Thomas then forgot how _breathing_ worked.

Jimmy’s mouth was hot against his dick, exploring the full figure of it with long swallows and torturously languid licks. Sometimes Jimmy would pause long enough to adorn Thomas’s cock with wet kisses and adoring little pecks, and Thomas gripped the bedframe with a hold that might have twisted the very metal. He alternated between gasping at the ceiling and watching his manhood slide so effortlessly between Jimmy’s lips. As an orgasmic shudder began to roil through Thomas, it became abundantly clear that Jimmy had been a _very_ busy boy in the last few years.

Jimmy caught the essence of his love with lips willingly parted, receiving it like it was something sacred. Thomas felt limp, barely able to stand without the aid of the bedframe. Jimmy was driving him mad with the deceptively innocent way he was thumbing Thomas’s cum off his red lips, only to draw his fingers into his mouth to wrap his tongue around the taste. Thomas almost couldn’t stand it the way Jimmy’s long lashes fluttered closed with each finger he licked.

Then Jimmy climbed back up to his feet, stepping close enough to Thomas to take hold of Thomas’s stiff bosom shirt, starting to push it back over his shoulders as he murmured, “What other services does the gentleman require for the night?”

Thomas was arrested with lust, pinned between the bedframe and the unmistakable arousal between Jimmy’s legs. The very idea was enough to excite him all over again, almost afraid to believe that life somehow found it fitting to reward him with the love of his life.

“Maybe he likes a little roll across the floor, hm? Jimmy was whispering into his ear as he guided Thomas to loosening his own trousers. “Or his baby on his hands on his hands and knees? Or maybe the gentleman would prefer to tie his pet to the bedpost?”

As Jimmy’s trousers slipped down his muscular thighs, revealing for Thomas the shape of his need for the first time. He was panting heavily as Jimmy continued to whisper dirty suggestions to him, all of which tempted him with mental renditions of how delicious each and every scenario could be. Any questions as to whether Jimmy’s big talk about his bedroom manners were just a whole lot of bluster were immediately squashed.

“Or _maybe_ , the gentleman likes to be on his back?” Jimmy was saying as his ever-busy hands helped Thomas’s find the space between his hips and the waistband of his unlacing boxers. “Tell, me, _Thomas_ , would you prefer your legs over me shoulders, or a pretty blond straddlin’ you until you cum?”

“I want – I want….” Thomas has practically lost the capacity to speak, so maddened with lust was he. The very _idea_ of Jimmy having a ride on his cock was nearly enough to unmake him where he stood. In his embarrassment that he couldn’t articulate nearly six years of desire, Thomas neatly disentangled himself from Jimmy’s grasping arms, and quickly walked towards the nightstand, where he had stashed some of his more _personal_ belongings. He pulled the drawer open and sifted through the collection of loose change and magazines, his mind locked on how Jimmy still drove his dreams after all this time. A dizziness overtook him as he thought of how deeply Jimmy could touch him with even the littlest graze. He’d settled for so many unhelpful remedies over the years, but as he lingered there in this breathing fantasy, all he could think of was how much Jimmy was all he really needed – the simple medicine for the headache that had slammed him from wall to wall since he’d been left alone.

He had no sooner had wrapped his fingers around the small tin of Vaseline he carried with him nearly everywhere, did he find Jimmy’s arms snaking around him again. He quickly became aware of the fact that Jimmy had stripped himself of any garments that had still hung to his athletic frame, and was had pressed the contours of his naked body against Thomas’s back. The wet tip of Jimmy’s cock stained the tails of Thomas’s shirt and tickled him just beneath the curve of his buttocks – a caress that cause Thomas to shudder with eroticism yet again. At this rate, he wouldn’t even _have_ to fuck Jimmy to find himself crying with orgasmic pleasure.

“You still want me, right?” Jimmy asked with a tiny hint of uncertainty. Thomas found the question almost ridiculous, but also realized that his skittish behavior had probably come off as confusing.

“’Cause I’m sorry if I assumed wrong an’ all,” said Jimmy, definitely sounding apologetic despite how far he’d dragged out their encounter. “But I just thought that maybe – maybe you’d be pleased to know that I ain’t afraid of – of how I feel about you anymore.”

“It weren’t your fault – feelin’ that way. You wouldn’t be the first,” said Thomas in a voice that sounded like it belonged to someone else. His back was still turned to Jimmy, his fingers tightened around the Vaseline like it was a sort of rune. “Not everyone is a fool like me.”

“Or me,” said Jimmy, who was spinning Thomas around to face him. The salaciousness had melted from him, replaced by an earnest expression that even his wonderfully nude body couldn’t distract from. He held Thomas firmly at the elbows, the linen of Thomas’s shirt caught between his fists like he could love him or leave him with only the smallest of flicks. “Y’know I’d give you anything, though, right?” he said quietly. “Just to see you – just to be with you. It’s all I ever wanted. I’d take back even words unspoken if it meant makin’ you love me agai—”

Jimmy’s sentence was truncated by the sensuous kiss that Thomas suddenly laid upon the blond’s mouth. His lips parted to push his tongue against Jimmy’s, revisiting the valeting lesson that had found Jimmy in a similar position. He’d never kissed anyone the way he kissed Jimmy, hardly cognizant of the things that usually depressed and upset him when they were together. If Jimmy was a drug, Thomas wanted to shoot his veins full of everything he was made of.  

“Of course I still love you,” Thomas mumbled against Jimmy’s mouth, his eyelids heavy with lust. “We might’ve been miles apart, but you were always meant for me, Jimmy. This fool still believes that.”

“My lucky day,” Jimmy whispered back, giving Thomas’s sleeve a jerk to pull him down to the floor. They fell in a pile in the corner where the bed jutted against the nightstand. Thomas shoved Jimmy into the angled space by inching forward on his knees, until Jimmy was spread across his thighs and leaning back across the tiny cot with trembling breaths. With the stiff cuffs of his shirt sleeves flopping over his damaged wrists, Thomas sat back on his heels and popped open the Vaseline, hoping Jimmy wouldn’t notice the scars; he didn’t want to kill the moment with his old miseries. Instead, he just said, “Mine, too.”

The first time Thomas heard Jimmy sigh his name was when Thomas pushed a pair of slicked fingers between Jimmy’s legs. He sighed it again – and _again_ – every time Thomas touched him with progressing intimacy. Still perched upon Thomas’s thighs, Jimmy had flung himself backwards across the bed, one arm bent over his face as Thomas pulled his hand away and lifted his hips to press the head of his cock against Jimmy’s buttocks, As he lingered there, just a breath away from coupling with his wayward love, Thomas couldn’t help but drink in Jimmy’s naked beauty, and wondered how it was possible any of it was real. But then Jimmy’s pulse was like a warm current beneath his golden flesh, and the lamplight painted rosy amber shapes across Jimmy’s contentment just so. Jimmy’s erection trembled wantonly against his abdomen, the crown of desire leaking from its tip a glistening pinprick in the soft light.

Then he rolled his hips forward, rising slightly off his heels to press into Jimmy with an erotic shiver that made him groan. Jimmy gripped the sheets and rocked himself downward, desperate to feel every inch of Thomas’s love. The articulation of Thomas’s name came out as more of a groan this time – a chanted invocation of Thomas as some sort of godly entity. Thomas took it away just a little – a tease as he began to learn what gave Jimmy pleasure – but Jimmy wouldn’t let him stray for long, and slid down onto Thomas’s cock with building urgency. Soon Thomas was clambering up against the edge of the bed, shoving Jimmy back onto the mattress as he began to fuck the blond with the vigor Jimmy demanded of him. Jimmy arched off the bed, a smile on his face as Thomas claimed him. He wanted more, more, _more_.

His toes curled against the floor and his shins crushing the edge of the mattress, Thomas bent over Jimmy, fucking him hard enough to make the whole cot quake beneath them. Jimmy’s eyes were closed in ecstasy, his fingers pinching the stiff bosom of Thomas’s dress shirt enough to crease the starched material. The shirt seemed to be the only thing grounding Jimmy, whose need for Thomas reverberated deep in his lungs and echoed through rounded lips. Jimmy tore at the garment, tied to it, but also eager to see it thrown away. His hands were explorative, questing to feel the smoothness of Thomas’s pink skin, to run through the dark hair that dusted his chest and stomach, his arms….

Thomas was too close to orgasm to think properly about the shirt as Jimmy finally managed to wrest it off of him. In fact, he even helped towards the end, pulling it over the scars he’d suddenly forgotten about so that they could both be naked and vulnerable together. Thomas planted a hand on either side of Jimmy’s face, his stomach in knots at the sight of Jimmy’s adoring expression, and the way he still begged, “ _Please_ ,” with Thomas’s cock so deep inside of him, it was hard to know where Thomas ended and Jimmy began.

Thomas gave Jimmy one final thrust before he came almost violently inside the blond. Jimmy clawed Thomas’s biceps as Thomas’s pleasure melted into his own. Then they both wilted across the bed, splayed horizontally across it as they fought to catch their breaths. Sticky with Jimmy’s cum and glistening with sweat, Thomas rolled off of the other man to lie beside him, staring up at the plaster ceiling above, which was adorned with a lazily spinning ceiling fan. He’d only ever seen one before in England, but he was thankful for it the gentle breeze it stirred with its electric turn.

“I hope you ain’t mad at me ‘cause I were so afraid,” said Jimmy, suddenly propping himself up on one elbow so he could toy with the hair grazing Thomas’s pectorals. “Back then, it felt like no matter how much I liked you, it’d all be for nothin’ if I messed it up with me usual ways. I were a proper heartbreaker –  y’know that – and after all the shite we’d been through I… I s’pose I were just worried I’d wreck it all again. Like I did in the first place.”

“Shut it,” said Thomas, who perfectly understood what Jimmy was trying to say. “I never blamed you for any of that. Even if we were only to be friends, I was happy to have you at all.”

“Alright, but, here’s the thing,” Jimmy enunciated, his wandering hand moving up towards Thomas’s face, “I don’t _want_ to be just your friend Thomas. And I don’t want to just be friends who sometimes see each other and have it off every now and then. I want – I want _you_. I _love_ you.”  

Abruptly sitting up, Thomas stared at Jimmy as if his eyes might somehow make up for the fact that his ears didn’t seem to be working properly. The masochistic part of him whispered lies that Jimmy was only saying things like that because he had enjoyed the sex, but then a better part of him – a more rational part – called to mind the euphoric expression Jimmy had worn throughout their lovemaking. Which was the first time that Thomas realized that he and Jimmy had just _made love_ – and that made all the difference. His hand suddenly shot out to grab Jimmy’s, which was still lingering against his torso even after Thomas had sat up. “You mean it?” he needed to know as Jimmy started to pull Thomas’s hand towards his mouth.

Then Jimmy noticed the new scars.

“Because I’d understand if you didn’t,” Thomas muttered, full of shame that there was nowhere left to hide. He squinted his eyes and hung his head, like he was expecting some sort of punishment, which was something he had unfortunately grown rather used to.

Jimmy’s reaction was wholly surprising and typical at once. “You’re a bloody idiot, you know that?” Jimmy huffed. But instead of the slap or punch that Thomas had been expecting, he found himself being wrapped in a fierce embrace. The soft wave of Jimmy’s hair tickled his cheek, and the warmth of his body flushed against his own. “I wouldn’t be stood here, sayin’ all this soppy sort of crap, if I wanted you to change one thing about you, Thomas Barrow. Not a single freckle or scar or nothin’. You’re you, and I hope you’ll stay that way. At least for me.”

“You’d be alone in that,” said Thomas, and a strange echo of something similar Jimmy had once said to him came to mind.

“I’d shout it from the rooftops if you wanted,” said Jimmy, his callused thumb brazenly running over the raised scars adoring Thomas’s wrist.

“You’re mad,” said Thomas, who was unable to look away. There was something oddly more intimate about the simple gesture than even the sex.

At once, Jimmy dropped Thomas’s hand and started to scoot off the bed. Still completely naked, he strode towards the room’s sole window, which was high up on the third floor. He was yanking back the curtains and unfastening the sash. “Watch me,” he said as he flung the lower pane upwards. Manhattan’s urban cacophony sung through the gap, swirling the curtains around Jimmy like a lacy breeze. Thomas found the image startlingly breathtaking.

“You can’t,” Thomas tried to caution as Jimmy pushed the sash higher, leaning out over the street as it were nothing. “You’ll be arrested – you of all people should know!”

“Then slap on the wrists,” said Jimmy over his shoulder. “Who’s gonna hear? We’re four blocks from Columbus Circle. Fuckin’ pigeons make more noise.” And then, before Thomas had a chance to stop him, he turned his attention back to the grumbling city outside, and screamed into its symphonic din: “I’m in love with Thomas Barrow from Yorkshire. An’ I want the whole goddaamn world to know it!”

Meanwhile, Thomas was stunned, somehow shocked that Jimmy had actually gone through with it. It took him a few moments to find words, through which time Jimmy repeated his message even more succinctly: “I’m Jimmy Kent and I love Thomas bloody Barrow!” His voice bounced off the street, rumbled through the motors trundling along the cobblestones and then ran up the brownstones across the way and into the smoggy sky. “I love you, Thomas Barrow! I love you!”

When he was through, he turned around to face Thomas once more, a hand on each hip as he said proudly, “There. I hope you’re satisfied.”

Thomas closed his mouth, swallowed, and then said, “I s’pose I am.” He decided to keep it private that part of his assessment had to do with how lovely Jimmy looked with the gaslight from the street printing little star clusters on Jimmy’s skin through the lace curtains.

“Then I s’pose,” Jimmy drawled as he strode back over to Thomas, “you’ll like to have be back in England. Where I can continue to satisfy you.” He leaned down and whispered into Thomas’s ear thickly, “Every night.”

The very idea made Thomas’s mouth dry. “I wish,” he said with a touch of sadness. “But you know Mr. Carson’ll never allow it.”

Jimmy drew back, one eyebrow crinkling into the bridge of his nose while the other arched itself high. “You’re the butler these days, aren’t you?” he reminded Thomas, almost as if the fact had been forgotten. “Don’t you have a say in who gets to be on staff?”

“If only it were that simple,” sighed Thomas. “It’s Mr. Carson who still calls the shots. And His Lordship, of course. Besides, won’t Mr. Aldridge be needin’ a valet?”

Jimmy shrugged and let out a snort. “Things’re changin’ here too fast for Mr. Aldridge to worry about that,” he said. “Not like it is back home, I’m sure.”

Thomas was thoughtful, thinking about his position as head of staff in a way he had never done before. “I suppose I could make the suggestion to His Lordship,” he started off slowly, chewing his lip as he considered how he might do it. “After all, what good is it if I can’t have a staff that runs the house the way _I_ see fit?”

“Right you are,” said Jimmy, who was growing excited that perhaps things might actually work out the way he’d envisioned. “And if that doesn’t work, I’ll ask Lady Rose to help. Lord Grantham loves her, and she’s promised me a favor. She’s told me she’d help me if ever I needed it. Y’know, since I’m such a good secret-keeper.”

Thomas gave Jimmy a look, leaning back on one hand. “I thought it was knowing that secret that got you the job with her husband in the first place?” he wondered, still finding it all quite mysterious.

“Nah,” said Jimmy, squaring his shoulders a bit. “It were her knowin’ a secret of mine what did that.”

At that, Thomas had to laugh. “And what could you have possibly told our little lady that was just _so_ convincin’ that she’d go out of her way to hire you, and then redistribute you at the drop of a hat?”

“Oh. Simple,” Jimmy replied as he moved to sit down next to Thomas once more. He leaned his head against Thomas’s shoulder and reached for his hands, which he stroked affectionately as he spoke. “I just told her that how much I missed you, and that I’d do anythin’ to be with you again.”

Thomas was taken slightly aback, though he supposed he wasn’t surprised that Lady Rose would be the sort who wouldn’t be the least bit shocked by such a revelation. “And she’d help you just like that?” he asked with a tiny smile.

“Yep,” said Jimmy, squeezing Thomas’s hands. “Just like that.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Also, for the two of you reading In the Fade, I should have some more of that soon. Once it's edited. I appreciate any and all patience on that. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this! Feel free to let me know how terrible it is. I'm so bad at one-shots, haha.


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